Elizabeth Hodgson. The Masculinities of John Milton: Cultures and Constructs of Manhood in the Major Works. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 290 pp. ISBN 9781009223584. $99.99 hardback.

Elizabeth Hodgson’s Masculinities of John Milton: Cultures and Constructs of Manhood in the Major Works is the first book-length project on the subject of masculinity in John Milton’s works, demonstrating that there is still exciting work to be done in the field of early modern gender and sexuality. Milton scholars have understandably neglected discussing men and masculinity because Milton, when it comes down to it, is always already talking about men. Hodgson admits: “It is very easy to read male or masculine Miltonic voices, or characters, or subject positions, as normative, invisible, and genderless, because they are so prevalent” (8). Men are the default, who do not need to be discussed as such, whereas women are, at the best, Othered, and, at the worst, villainized. From Eve’s lower position on the gender hierarchy to Milton’s insistence that husbands should be able to divorce their wives (but not the other way around), Milton’s sexism has been fiercely debated by feminist scholars for decades, in ways that have either upheld his misogynist tendencies or valiantly called them into question. Hodgson does not wish to devalue this important work, and is careful to call attention to it, and to other scholarly voices, throughout her book. Her main goal, however, is “to destabilize th[e] normalizing of masculinity and masculinism in Milton’s works, partly by naming and examining it directly and partly in conversation with […] other works of his era with similar or differing perspectives and ideologies” (8). According to Hodgson, we must understand Milton’s portrayals of men and masculinity if we are to have a complete picture of Milton’s portrayal of gender and sexuality, and, indeed, his entire literary project.

In her Introduction, Hodgson usefully builds on other scholarly works on early modern manhood/masculinity, such as Alexandra Shepard’s Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (2003), to make her case that it is time to pay attention to the masculinity and maleness of Milton’s characters. She notes: “It is hard to deny […] that Milton’s works (early and late) persistently discuss, imagine, glorify, defend, and relocate men, masculinities, and male-centered communities in a wide variety of positions and paradigms” (1). Furthermore, the “voices and postures of Milton’s male personae, including his own, reveal afresh how in Milton’s writing maleness is invented, reinvented, and implemented in literary forms” (1). Not expecting readers to take her word for it, she provides a reading of “Lycidas” as a test case, arguing that Milton’s poetic project in the pastoral elegy is about “homosocial brotherhood” (2). Not only does the poem elevate masculine bonds, but it also criticizes or marginalizes the few feminine figures that make an appearance. Milton thus indicates that the voice of the poet is the voice of particularly masculine authority. In light of this, Hodgson confesses that she cannot find the proto-feminist views that some scholars have detected in Milton’s works. Furthermore, Milton’s portrayal of masculinity is, unsurprisingly, characteristically elitist. “Milton’s men,” Hodgson observes, “are not Everyman” (5). She admits: Milton “is in fact not for all time nor for all peoples” (7). Recognizing this, rather than trying to make him fit into our progressive boxes, no matter how much we would like him to, allows us to read Milton in all of his complexities. After the Introduction, the following five chapters consider Milton’s works in mostly chronological order, though, perhaps unconventionally, they rarely put these works into conversation with one another across chapters. Instead, the chapters examine one or two Miltonic works, or a cluster of related works, and their engagement with different stages or aspects of manhood and masculinity alongside other relevant contextualizing works from the time period.

Chapter one begins with Milton’s portrayal of boyhood education in his Ludlow Masque, examining the masque alongside his brief pamphlet, Of Education. Hodgson thus directs our attention to the brothers in the work rather than to their more frequently discussed sister. According to Hodgson, the masque is “clearly an educative text, with boys being guided by a teacherly figure on their way to adult responsibilities […]. Milton’s masque builds on [the] narrative of boys being schooled into courtly manhood, repeating the ideology of Milton’s educational tract” (28). Hodgson first unpacks the nature of early modern boyhood education, arguing that Milton’s educational tract, like other early modern pedagogical theories, is “aimed at creating replaceably equipped Englishmen, not individual or even edifying friends” (32). Hodgson explains how early modern boys, in the course of their education, transitioned from a private, feminine sphere of influence at home to a public, masculine one at school. Milton portrays this trajectory through the figures of the masculine schoolmaster, Thyrsis, and the “maternal magician,” Sabrina (34). The masque’s woodland setting gives the two brothers an opportunity to remember and recite their school lessons and to put them, even if imperfectly, into practice. In this chapter, Hodgson also compellingly compares Milton’s portrayal of boyhood education in a nature school setting to that in William Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Chapter two is about masculinity and marriage in Milton’s controversial Divorce Tracts. Sermons and domestic handbooks that emphasize the “intimate connections between marriage and other social and power relations” provide brief context (58). In particular, Hodgson argues that “Milton asserts in his prose treatises on divorce that a specifically literal patriarchal power to get rid of wives is a key element of English political reform” (57). Indeed, according to Milton, “a husband’s right to depart unhealthy marriage is central to the future of the commonwealth” because unhappy marriages undermine both men’s masculinity and the patriarchal authority that is crucial to a properly functioning society (60). In this way, divorce is not a private matter but one of utmost public importance. Milton urges Parliament to legalize divorce if it wants its fledgling political project to succeed. Hodgson then compares Milton’s arguments to those of Charles I in Eikon Basilike, observing how Charles I suggests that Henrietta Maria’s Catholicism constitutes a kind of “divorce.” In Eikonoklastes, Milton strikes back at Charles I’s attempt to distance himself from his wife, claiming that the monarch’s relationship with Henrietta Maria emasculates both him and the commonwealth. Ultimately, however, Hodgson demonstrates how Charles I and Milton make strangely similar arguments since both “argue for the man separated from his wife as the perfect English citizen and leader” (75).

Chapter three focuses on the role of masculine conversation in the construction of early modern manhood in Paradise Lost. Hodgson, in her typical move of drawing attention to a topic that is both obvious and yet overlooked, observes that large portions of Milton’s epic are devoted to conversations between masculine characters: Satan and his followers, God and the Son, Adam and God, Adam and Raphael. Hodgson argues that “men talking to other men” (85) is a useful lens through which to read Paradise Lost since conversation both creates and reinforces the hierarchies central to the epic. To make this argument, she looks to conversational conduct guides to demonstrate that “[c]onversation, especially among men, especially among men of educated, gentry, or aristocratic standing, especially as a new form of status-marking leisure activity, is clearly a powerful cultural habitus in early modern Europe” (87). Indeed, masculine conversation becomes the “most pervasive means by which [social] stratifications and hierarchies are socially and literally constructed, tested, and evinced in th[e early modern] era” and in Paradise Lost (85). The chapter naturally spends the most time on Adam’s lengthy conversation with Raphael, emphasizing how the two masculine beings’ discussion of women reflects their power dynamics: “Adam turns their discourse into a quintessentially homosocial one when he deferentially asks Raphael to give him a correctly hierarchical understanding of his affection for Eve” (104). This, Hodgson observes, has “bleak implications for the epic’s female characters” (109); however, as she ultimately concludes, the formation of homosocial networks based on “elegant social talk” are actually fragile at best (110).

Chapter four is about the role of militarism in the masculine heroics of both Areopagitica and Paradise Regained. This chapter thus stands out for its willingness to put works in conversation with one another across the scope of Milton’s career. While Milton frequently celebrates feats of arms through his depictions of warring angels and institutions, he does not do so unconditionally. Hodgson argues that “Milton’s ethic of militarist masculinity in his works is […] almost impossible to tag clearly” and that “the (almost, perhaps), ‘not practicing’ of warfare is in fact fundamental to the military masculinism that Milton constructs” (119, 120). For Hodgson, the “better man […] is the one who has militant courage but who is also reluctant to champion the soldiering essence of masculinity” (120). According to this reading, “neither Milton’s Jesus in Paradise Regained nor the speakers of Areopagitica give more than a glance toward the solidarity, the esprit de corps, the unit loyalty, or the collective fraternity of military brotherhood. Milton chooses instead in these works to imagine his warlike figures as primarily solitary, self-defining, self-disciplining, and self-led” (121). Hodgson frames this argument within other works about the necessity of militarism, such as the New Model Army’s Putney Debates. In these works, Hodgson finds a masculine discourse that celebrates warfare only with reluctance. The proper male hero should be able to defeat his enemies at the time of need, but only as a last resort.

Chapter five looks to the role of male friendship in Samson Agonistes, focusing specifically on the Danite chorus. Hodgson argues that “the Chorus in Samson are imagined by Milton to be not just observers but also Samson’s affective companions through whom certain bonding and excluding narratives are constructed. […] [They] model, echo, and rearticulate many of the less-studied political and exclusionary functions of the male in Milton’s culture” (146). After briefly examining the politics of early modern male friendship more generally, Hodgson explores how the Chorus reflects the socio-political dimensions of male friendship in Samson. While scholars have long commented on the nature and role of the Chorus, they have never examined the Chorus specifically as Samson’s male friends. The fact that the Chorus are referred to as Samson's “friends” and “equals,” however, makes their friend status indisputable. Their identification with the Tribe of Dan also reinforces the idea that the strongest male friends are local. Hodgson compellingly connects the valorization of localized friendship in the closet drama to the importance of local communities found in county surveys, particularly Thomas Fuller’s Worthies of England (1662). Ultimately, as she observes, Milton “amplif[ies] the communal bonds and political power of particularly like-minded male friends, leveraging local masculine intimacy into a civic weapon or a civic tool to be wielded against a series of communities outside that circle” (165).

In the book’s “Postlude,” Hodgson examines how Milton represents himself and his own masculinity in that most personal of early modern genres, the sonnet. She examines three very different sonnets, “A Book was Writ of Late,” “To the Lord General Cromwell,” and “To Mr. Cyriack Skinner, upon his Blindness.” While very different in tone and subject, these brief poems serve to demonstrate the ways in which “the Miltonic man, the poetic speaker, defends himself from his imagined detractors, the collective others who might judge him, oppose him, or ignore him” (186). In this way, Milton uses the “sonnet’s masculine self fashioning […] as a tool to make men” (186). Acknowledging that her book is really just the first extended foray into a large and emerging field, Hodgson ends with a persuasive call to action for other scholars to examine Milton’s masculinities in different ways.

Overall, Hodgson’s book is incredibly insightful, and will be of interest to anyone working in Milton studies or with an interest in early modern understandings of gender and sexuality more generally. Hodgson builds on important scholarship throughout her chapters, making her debts to previous scholars clear while also indicating how her work is extending or building upon that scholarship. Her writing is also very clear, making complicated concepts easy to understand and follow. For this reason, Hodgson’s book should be accessible not only for advanced scholars, but also for undergraduates – a chapter from her book, for instance, could make for a strong secondary reading assignment in an upper-level undergraduate Milton course. Furthermore, while well researched, her work also feels like it is only beginning to plumb the depths of this valuable topic for Milton studies. There is much for Spenserians here as well, and not only because of Spenser and Milton’s affinity as being the two great epicists of the English Renaissance. Indeed, Hodgson’s work can serve as a call to action for Spenserians to approach (or reapproach) the topic of masculinity in Spenser’s own works. Perhaps the greatest praise for any scholarly work is that it is sure to inspire other scholars to build on its topic, and that will certainly be the case here.

Katharine Cleland

Virginia Tech